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Section 14 of 15 - Table of Contents
Chapter XII.
The Ten Religions and Christianity.
Sec. 1. General Results of this Survey.
Sec. 2. Christianity a Pleroma, or Fulness of Life.
Sec. 3. Christianity, as a Pleroma, compared with Brahmanism, Confucianism,
and Buddhism.
Sec. 4. Christianity compared with the Avesta and the Eddas. The Duad in
all Religions.
Sec. 5. Christianity and the Religions of Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
Sec. 6. Christianity in Relation to Judaism and Mohammedanism. The Monad in
all Religions.
Sec. 7. The Fulness of Christianity is derived from the life of Jesus.
Sec. 8. Christianity as a Religion of Progress and of Universal Unity.
Sec. 1. General Results of this Survey.
We have now examined, as fully as our limits would allow, ten of the
chief religions which have enlisted the faith of mankind. We are prepared
to ask, in conclusion, what they teach us in regard to the prospects of
Christianity, and the religious future of our race.
First, this survey must have impressed on every mind the fact that man is
eminently a religious being. We have found religion to be his supreme and
engrossing interest on every continent, in every millennium of historic
time, and in every stage of human civilization. In some periods men are
found as hunters, as shepherds, as nomads, in others they are living
associated in cities, but in all these conditions they have their
religion. The tendency to worship some superhuman power is universal.
The opinion of the positivist school, that man passes from a theological
stage to one of metaphysics, and from that to one of science, from which
later and higher epoch both theology and philosophy are excluded, is not
in accordance with the facts we have been observing. Science and art, in
Egypt, went hand in hand with theology, during thousands of years. Science
in Greece preceded the latest forms of metaphysics, and both Greek science
and Greek philosophy were the preparation for Christian faith. In India
the Sankhya philosophy was the preparation for the Buddhist religion.
Theology and religion to-day, instead of disappearing in science, are as
vigorous as ever. Science, philosophy, and theology are all advancing
together, a noble sisterhood of thought. And, looking at facts, we may
ask, In what age or time was religion more of a living force, acting on
human affairs, than it is at present? To believe in things not seen, to
worship a power above visible nature, to look forward to an unknown
future, this is natural to man.
In the United States there is no established religion, yet in no country
in the world is more interest taken in religion than with us. In the
Protestant denominations it has dispensed with the gorgeous and imposing
ritual, which is so attractive to the common mind, and depends mainly on
the interest of the word of truth. Yet the Protestant denominations make
converts, build churches, and support their clergy with an ardor seemingly
undiminished by the progress of science. There are no symptoms that man is
losing his interest in religion in consequence of his increasing knowledge
of nature and its laws.
Secondly, we have seen that these religions vary exceedingly from each
other in their substance and in their forms. They have a great deal in
common, but a great deal that is different. Mr. Wentworth Higginson,[403]
in an excellent lecture, much of which has our cordial assent, says,
"Every race believes in a Creator and Governor of the world, in whom
devout souls recognize a Father also." But Buddhism, the most extensive
religion on the surface of the earth, explicitly denies creation, and
absolutely ignores any Ruler or Governor of the world. The Buddha neither
made the world nor preserves it, and the Buddha is the great object of
Buddhist worship. Mr. Higginson says: "Every race believes in
immortality." Though the Buddhists, as we have seen, believe in
immortality, it is in so obscure a form that many of the best scholars
declare that the highest aim and the last result of all progress in
Buddhism is annihilation. He continues, "Every race recognizes in its
religious precepts the brotherhood of man." The Koran teaches no such
doctrine, and it is notorious that the Brahmanical system of caste, which
has been despotic in India for twenty-five hundred years, excludes such
brotherhood. Mr. Higginson therefore is of opinion that caste has grown up
in defiance of the Vedas. The Vedas indeed are ignorant of caste, but they
are also ignorant of human brotherhood. The system of caste was not a
defiance of the Vedas.
Nothing is gained for humanity by such statements, which are refuted
immediately by the most evident facts. The true "sympathy of religions"
does not consist in their saying the same thing, any more than a true
concord in music consists in many performers striking the same note.
Variety is the condition of harmony. These religions may, and we believe
will, be all harmonized; but thus far it is only too plain that they have
been at war with each other. In order to find the resemblances we must
begin by seeing the differences.
Cudworth, in his great work, speaks of "the symphony of all religions," an
expression which we prefer to that of Mr. Higginson. It expresses
precisely what we conceive to be the fact, that these religions are all
capable of being brought into union, though so very different. They may
say,
"Are not we formed, as notes of music are,
For one another, though dissimilar?
Such difference, without discord, as shall make
The sweetest sounds."
But this harmony can only be established among the ethnic religions by
means of a catholic religion which shall be able to take each of them up
into itself, and so finally merge them in a higher union. The Greek,
Roman, and Jewish religions could not unite with each other; but they were
united by being taken up into Christianity. Christianity has assimilated
the essential ideas of the religions of Persia, Judaea, Egypt, Greece,
Rome, and Scandinavia; and each of these religions, in turn, disappeared
as it was absorbed by this powerful solvent. In the case of Greece, Rome,
Germany, and Judaea, this fact of their passing into solution in
Christianity is a matter of history. Not all the Jews became Christians,
nor has Judaism ceased to exist. This is perhaps owing to the doctrines of
the Trinity and the Deity of Christ, which offend the simplistic
monotheism of the Jewish mind. Yet Christianity at first grew out of
Judaism, and took up into itself the best part of the Jews in and out of
Palestine.
The question therefore is this, Will Christianity be able to do for the
remaining religions of the world what it did for the Greeks, the Romans,
and the Teutonic nations? Is it capable of becoming a universal religion?
Sec. 2. Christianity a Pleroma, or Fulness of Life.
It is evident that Christianity can become the universal human religion
only by supplying the religious wants of all the races of men who dwell on
all the face of the earth. If it can continue to give them all the truth
their own religions contain, and add something more; if it can inspire
them with all the moral life which their own religions communicate, and
yet more; and, finally, if it can unite the races of men in one family,
one kingdom of heaven,--then it is fitted to be and will become the
universal religion. It will then not share the fate of those which have
preceded it. It will not have its rise, progress, decline, and fall. It
will not become, in its turn, antiquated, and be left behind by the
advance of humanity. It will not be swallowed up in something deeper and
broader than itself. But it will appear as the desire of all nations, and
Christ will reign until he has subdued all his enemies--error, war, sin,
selfishness, tyranny, cruelty--under his feet.
Now, as we have seen, Christianity differs from all other religions (on
the side of truth) in this, that it is a pleroma, or fulness of knowledge.
It does not differ, by teaching what has never been said or thought
before. Perhaps the substance of most of the statements of Jesus may be
found scattered through the ten religions of the world, some here and some
there. Jesus claims no monopoly of the truth. He says. "My doctrine is not
mine, but his who sent me." But he _does_ call himself "the Light of the
World," and says that though he does not come to destroy either the law or
the prophets, he comes to fulfil them in something higher. His work is to
fulfil all religions with something higher, broader, and deeper than what
they have,--accepting their truth, supplying their deficiencies.
If this is a fact, then it will appear that Christianity comes, not as an
exclusive, but as an inclusive system. It includes everything, it excludes
nothing but limitation and deficiency.
Whether Christianity be really such a pleroma of truth or not, must be
ascertained by a careful comparison of its teachings, and the ideas lying
back of them, with those of all other religions. We have attempted this,
to some extent, in our Introduction, and in our discussion of each
separate religion. We have seen that Christianity, in converting the
nations, always accepted something and gave something in return. Thus it
received from Egypt and Africa their powerful realism, as in the writings
of Tertullian, Origen, Augustine, and gave in return a spiritual doctrine.
It received God, as seen in nature and its organizations, and returned God
as above nature. Christianity took from Greece intellectual activity, and
returned moral life. It received from Rome organization, and returned
faith in a fatherly Providence. It took law, and gave love. From the
German races it accepted the love of individual freedom, and returned
union and brotherly love. From Judaism it accepted monotheism as the
worship of a Supreme Being, a Righteous Judge, a Holy King, and added to
this faith in God as in all nature and all life.
But we will proceed to examine some of these points a little more
minutely.
Sec. 3. Christianity, as a Pleroma, compared with Brahmanism, Confucianism,
and Buddhism.
Christianity and Brahmanism. The essential value of Brahmanism is its
faith in spirit as distinct from matter, eternity as distinct from time,
the infinite as opposed to the finite, substance as opposed to form.
The essential defect of Brahmanism is its spiritual pantheism, which
denies all reality to this world, to finite souls, to time, space, matter.
In its vast unities all varieties are swallowed up, all differences come
to an end. It does not, therefore, explain the world, it denies it. It is
incapable of morality, for morality assumes the eternal distinction
between right and wrong, good and evil, and Brahmanism knows no such
difference. It is incapable of true worship, since its real God is spirit
in itself, abstracted from all attributes. Instead of immortality, it can
only teach absorption, or the disappearance of the soul in spirit, as
rain-drops disappear in the ocean.
Christianity teaches a Supreme Being who is pure spirit, "above all,
through all, and in all," "from whom, and through whom, and to whom are
all things," "in whom we live, and move, and have our being." It is a more
spiritual religion than Brahmanism, for the latter has passed on into
polytheism and idolatry, which Christianity has always escaped. Yet while
teaching faith in a Supreme Being, the foundation and substance below all
existence, it recognizes him as A LIVING GOD. He is not absorbed in
himself, nor apart from his world, but a perpetual Providence, a personal
Friend and Father. He dwells in eternity, but is manifested in time.
Christianity, therefore, meets the truth in Brahmanism by its doctrine of
God as Spirit, and supplies its deficiencies by its doctrine of God as a
Father.
Christianity and the system of Confucius. The good side in the teaching of
Confucius is his admirable morality, his wisdom of life in its temporal
limitations, his reverence for the past, his strenuous conservatism of all
useful institutions, and the uninterrupted order of the social system
resting on these ideas.
The evil in his teaching is the absence of the supernatural element,
which deprives the morality of China of enthusiasm, its social system of
vitality, its order of any progress, and its conservatism of any
improvement. It is a system without hope, and so has remained frozen in an
icy and stiff immobility for fifteen hundred years.
But Christianity has shown itself capable of uniting conservatism with
progress, in the civilization of Christendom. It respects order, reveres
the past, holds the family sacred, and yet is able also to make continual
progress in science, in art, in literature, in the comfort of the whole
community. It therefore accepts the good and the truth in the doctrines of
Confucius, and adds to these another element of new life.
Christianity and Buddhism. The truth in Buddhism is in its doctrine of the
relation of the soul to the laws of nature; its doctrine of consequences;
its assurance of a strict retribution for every human action; its promise
of an ultimate salvation in consequence of good works; and of a redemption
from all the woes of time by obedience to the truth.
The evil in the system is that belonging to all legalism. It does not
inspire faith in any living and present God, or any definite immortality.
The principle, therefore, of development is wanting, and it leaves the
Mongol races standing on a low plane of civilization, restraining them
from evil, but not inspiring them by the sight of good.
Christianity, like Buddhism, teaches that whatever a man sows that shall
he also reap; that those who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for
glory, honor, and immortality shall receive eternal life; that the books
shall be opened in the last day, and every man be rewarded according to
his works; that he whose pound gains five pounds shall be ruler over five
cities. In short, Christianity, in its Scriptures and its practical
influence, has always taught salvation by works.
Yet, beside this, Christianity teaches justification by faith, as the root
and fountain of all real obedience. It inspires faith in a Heavenly Father
who has loved his every child from before the foundation of the world;
who welcomes the sinner back when he repents and returns; whose forgiving
love creates a new life in the heart. This faith evermore tends to awaken
the dormant energies in the soul of man; and so, under its influence, one
race after another has commenced a career of progress. Christianity,
therefore, can fulfil Buddhism also.
Sec. 4. Christianity compared with the Avesta and the Eddas. The Duad in all
Religions.
The essential truth in the Avesta and the Eddas is the same. They both
recognize the evil in the world as real, and teach the duty of fighting
against it. They avoid the pantheistic indifference of Brahmanism, and the
absence of enthusiasm in the systems of Confucius and the Buddha, by the
doctrine of a present conflict between the powers of good and evil, of
light and of darkness. This gives dignity and moral earnestness to both
systems. By fully admitting the freedom of man, they make the sense of
responsibility possible, and so purify and feed morality at its roots.
The difficulty with both is, that they carry this dualistic view of nature
too far, leaving it an unreconciled dualism. The supreme Monad is lost
sight of in this ever-present Duad. Let us see how this view of evil, or
the dual element in life, appears in other systems.
As the Monad in religion is an expression of one infinite supreme
presence, pervading all nature and life, so the Duad shows the antagonism
and conflict between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, good and evil,
the infinite perfection and the finite imperfection. This is a conflict
actually existing in the world, and one which religion must accept and
account for. Brahmanism does not accept it, but ignores it. This whole
conflict is Maya, a deception and illusion. Yet, in this form of illusion,
it makes itself so far felt, that it must be met by sacrifices, prayers,
penances, and the law of transmigration; until all the apparent antagonism
shall be swallowed up in the Infinite One, the only substance in the
universe.
Buddhism recognizes the conflict more fully. It frankly accepts the Duad
as the true explanation of the actual universe. The ideal universe as
Nirvana may be one; but of this we know nothing. The actual world is a
twofold world, composed of souls and the natural laws. The battle of life
is with these laws. Every soul, by learning to obey them, is able to
conquer and use them, as steps in an ascent toward Nirvana.
But the belief of Zoroaster and that of Scandinavia regard the Duad as
still more deeply rooted in the essence of existing things. All life is
battle,--battle with moral or physical evil. Courage is therefore the
chief virtue in both systems. The Devil first appears in theology in these
two forms of faith. The Persian devil is Ahriman; the Scandinavian devil
is Loki. Judaism, with its absolute and supreme God, could never admit
such a rival to his power as the Persian Ahriman; yet as a being
permitted, for wise purposes, to tempt and try men, he comes into their
system as Satan. Satan, on his first appearance in the Book of Job, is one
of the angels of God. He is the heavenly critic; his business is to test
human virtue by trial, and see how deep it goes. His object in testing Job
was to find whether he loved virtue for its rewards, or for its own sake.
"Does Job serve God for naught?" According to this view, the man who is
good merely for the sake of reward is not good at all.
In the Egyptian system, as in the later faith of India, the evil principle
appears as a power of destruction. Siva and Typhon are the destroying
agencies from whom proceed all the mischief done in the world.
Nevertheless, they are gods, not devils, and have their worship and
worshippers among those whose religious nature is more imbued with fear
than with hope. The timid worshipped the deadly and destructive powers,
and their prayers were deprecations. The bolder worshipped the good gods.
Similarly, in Greece, the Chtonic deities had their shrines and
worshippers, as had the powers of Blight, Famine, and Pestilence at Rome.
Yet only in the Avesta is this great principle of evil set forth in full
antagonism against the powers of light and love. And probably from
Persia, after the captivity, this view of Satan entered into Jewish
theology. In the Old Testament, indeed, where Satan or the Devil as a
proper name only occurs four times[404], in all which cases he is a
subordinate angel, the true Devil does not appear. In the Apocrypha he is
said (Wisdom ii. 24) to have brought death into the world. The New
Testament does not teach a doctrine of Satan, or the Devil, as something
new and revealed then for the first time, but assumes a general though
vague belief in such a being. This belief evidently existed among the Jews
when Christ came. It as evidently was not taught in the Old Testament. The
inevitable inference is that it grew up in the Jewish mind from its
communication with the Persian dualism.
But though the doctrine of a Devil is no essential part of
Christianity[405], the reality and power of evil is fully recognized in
the New Testament and in the teachings of the Church. Indeed, in the
doctrine of everlasting punishment and of an eternal hell, it has been
carried to a dangerous extreme. The Divine sovereignty is seriously
infringed and invaded by such a view. If any outlying part of the universe
continues in a state of permanent rebellion, God is not the absolute
sovereign. But wickedness is rebellion. If any are to continue eternally
in hell, it is because they continue in perpetual wickedness; that is, the
rebellion against God will never be effectually suppressed. Only when
every knee bows, and every tongue confesses that Christ is Lord to the
glory of God the Father; only when truth and love have subdued all enemies
by converting them into friends, is redemption complete and the universe
at peace.
Now, Christianity (in spite of the illogical doctrine of everlasting
punishment) has always inspired a faith in the redeeming power of love to
conquer all evil. It has taught that evil can be overcome by good. It
asserts truth to be more powerful than error, right than wrong. It teaches
us in our daily prayer to expect that God's kingdom shall come, and his
will shall be done on earth as it is in Heaven. It therefore fulfils the
truth in the great dualisms of the past by its untiring hope of a full
redemption from all sin and all evil.
Sec. 5. Christianity and the Religions of Egypt, Greece, and Rome.
The Religion of Egypt. This system unfolded the truth of the Divine in
this world, of the sacredness of bodily organization, and the descent of
Deity into the ultimate parts of his creation. Its defect was its
inability to combine with this an open spiritualism. It had not the
courage of its opinions, so far as they related to the divine unity,
spirituality, and eternity.
Christianity also accepts the doctrine of God, present in nature, in man,
in the laws of matter, in the infinite variety of things. But it adds to
this the elevated spiritualism of a monotheistic religion, and so accepts
the one and the all, unity and variety, substance and form, eternity and
time, spirit and body, as filled with God and manifesting him.
The Religions of Greece and Rome. The beauty of nature, the charm of art,
the genius of man, were idealized and deified in the Greek pantheon. The
divinity of law, organizing human society according to universal rules of
justice, was the truth in the Roman religion. The defect of the Greek
theology was the absence of a central unity. Its polytheism carried
variety to the extreme of disorder and dissipation. The centrifugal force,
not being properly balanced by any centripetal power, inevitably ends in
dissolution. The defect of Roman worship was, that its oppressive rules
ended in killing out life. Law, in the form of a stiff external
organization, produced moral death at last in Rome, as it had produced
moral death in Judaea.
Now Christianity, though a monotheism, and a monotheism which has
destroyed forever both polytheism and idolatry wherever it has gone, is
not that of numerical unity. The God of Christianity differs in this from
the God of Judaism and Mohammedanism. He is an infinite will; but he is
more. Christianity cognizes God as not only above nature and the soul, but
also as in nature and in the soul. Thus nature and the soul are made
divine. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity expresses this enlargement
of the Jewish monotheism from a numerical to a moral unity. The God of
Christ is human in this respect, that he is conceived of in the image of
man. Man is essentially a unit through his will, in which lies the secret
of personal identity. But besides will he has intellect, by which he comes
into communion with the universe; and affection, by which he comes into
communion with his race. Christianity conceives of God in the same way. He
is an omnipresent will as the Father, Creator, and Euler of all things. He
is the Word, or manifested Truth in the Son, manifested through all
nature, manifested through all human life. He is the Spirit, or
inspiration of each individual soul. So he is Father, Son, and Spirit,
above all, through all, and in us all. By this larger view of Deity
Christianity was able to meet the wants of the Aryan races, in whom the
polytheistic tendency is so strong. That tendency was satisfied by this
view of God immanent in nature and immanent in human life.
Judaism and Mohammedanism, with their more concrete monotheism, have not
been able to convert the Aryan races. Mohammedanism has never affected the
mind of India, nor disturbed the ascendency of Brahmanism there. And
though it nominally possesses Persia, yet it holds it as a subject, not as
a convert. Persian Sufism is a proof of the utter discontent of the Aryan
intellect with any monotheism of pure will. Sufism is the mystic form of
Mohammedanism, recognizing communion with God, and not merely submission,
as being the essence of true religion. During the long Mohammedan dominion
in Turkey it has not penetrated the minds or won the love of the Greek
races. It is evident that Christianity succeeded in converting the Greeks
and Romans by means of its larger view of the Deity, of which the
doctrine of the Trinity, as it stands in the creeds, is a crude illogical
expression.
Sec. 6. Christianity in Relation to Judaism and Mohammedanism. The Monad in
all Religions.
There are three religions which teach the pure upity of God, or true
monotheism. These three Unitarian religions are Judaism, Christianity, and
Mohammedanism. They also all originated in a single race, the Semitic
race, that which has occupied the central region of the world, the centre
of three continents. It is the race which tends to a religious unity, as
that of our Aryan ancestors tended to variety.
But what is pure monotheism? It is the worship of one alone God, separated
by the vast abyss of the infinite from all finite beings. It is the
worship of God, not as the Supreme Being only, not as the chief among many
gods, as Jupiter was the president of the dynasty on Olympus, not merely
the Most High, but as the only God. It avoids the two extremes, one of
making the Supreme Being head of a council or synod of deities, and the
other of making him indeed infinite, but an infinite abstraction, or abyss
of darkness. These are the two impure forms of monotheism. The first
prevailed in Greece, Rome, Egypt, Scandinavia. In each of these religions
there was a supreme being,--Zeus, Jupiter, Ammon, Odin,--but this supreme
god was only _primus inter pares_, first among equals. The other impure
form of monotheism prevailed in the East,--in Brahmanism, Buddhism, and
the religion of Zoroaster. In the one Parabrahm, in the other
Zerana-Akerana, in the third Nirvana itself, is the Infinite Being or
substance, wholly separate from all that is finite. It is so wholly
separate as to cease to be an object of adoration and obedience. Not
Parabrahm, but Siva, Vischnu, and Brahma; not Zerana-Akerana, but Ormazd
and the Amschaspands; not the infinite world of Nirvana, nor the mighty
Adi-Buddha, but the Buddhas of Confession, the finite Sakya-Muni, are the
objects of worship in these systems.
Only from the Semitic race have arisen the pure monotheistic religions of
Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism. Each of these proclaims one only
God, and each makes this only God the object of all worship and service.
Judaism says, "Hear! O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord!" (Deut. vi.
4.) Originally among the Jews, God's name as the "Plural of Majesty"
indicated a unity formed from variety; but afterward it became in the word
Jahveh a unity of substance. "By my name Jehovah I was not known to them"
(i.e. to the Patriarchs).[406] That name indicates absolute Being, "I am
the I am."[407]
Ancient Gentile monotheism vibrated between a personal God, the object of
worship, who was limited and finite, and an infinite absolute Being who
was out of sight, "whose veil no one had lifted." The peculiarity of the
Mosaic religion was to make God truly the one alone, and at the same time
truly the object of worship.
In this respect Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedanism agree, and in
this they differ from all other religions. Individual thinkers, like
Socrates, AEschylus, Cicero, have reached the same conviction; but these
three are the only popular religions, in which God is at once the infinite
and absolute, and the only object of worship.
Now it is a remarkable fact that these three religions, which are the only
pure monotheistic religions, are at the same time the only religions which
have any claim to catholicity. Buddhism, though the religion of numerous
nations, seems to be the religion of only one race, namely, the Turanic
race, or Mongols. The people of India who remain Buddhists, the Singalese,
or inhabitants of Ceylon, belong to the aboriginal Tamul, or Mongol race.
With this exception then (which is no exception, as far as we know the
ethnology of Eastern Asia), the only religions which aim at Catholicism
are these three, which are also the only monotheistic religions. Judaism
aimed at catholicity and hoped for it. It had an instinct of universality,
as appeared in its numerous attempts at making proselytes of other
nations. It failed of catholicity when it refused to accept as its Christ
the man who had risen above its national limitations, and who considered
Roman tax-gatherers and Samaritans as already prepared to enter the
kingdom of the Messiah. The Jews required all their converts to become
Jews, and in doing this left the catholic ground. Christianity in the
mouth of Paul, who alone fully seized the true idea of his Master, said,
"Circumcision availeth nothing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature."
In other words, he declared that it was _not_ necessary to become a Jew in
order to be a Christian.
The Jewish mind, so far forth as it was monotheistic, aimed at
catholicity. The unity of God carries with it, logically, the unity of
man. From one God as spirit we infer one human family. So Paul taught at
Athens. "God that made the world and all things therein, ... hath made of
one blood all races of men to dwell on all the face of the earth."
But the Jews, though catholic as monotheists, and as worshipping a
spiritual God, were limited by their ritual and their intense national
bigotry. Hereditary and ancestral pride separated them, and still separate
them, from the rest of mankind. "_We have Abraham to our Father_" is the
talisman which has kept them together, but kept them from union with
others.
Christianity and Mohammedanism, therefore, remain the only two really
catholic religions. Each has overpassed all the boundaries of race.
Christianity, beginning among the Jews, a Semitic people, passed into
Europe, and has become the religion of Greeks, Romans, Kelts, Germans, and
the Slavic races of Russia, and has not found it impossible to convert the
Africans, the Mongols, and the American Indians. So too the Mohammedan
religion, also beginning among the Semitic race, has become the nominal
religion of Persia, Turkey, Northern Africa, and Central Asia. Monotheism,
therefore, includes a tendency to catholicity. But Islam has everywhere
made subjects rather than converts, and so has failed of entire success.
It has not assimilated its conquests.
The monotheism of Christianity, as we have already seen, while accepting
the absolute supremacy of the Infinite Being, so as to displace forever
all secondary or subordinate gods, yet conceives of him as the present
inspiration of all his children. It sees him coming down, to bless them in
the sunshine and the shower, as inspiring every good thought, as a
providence guiding all human lives. And by this view it fulfils both
Judaism and Mohammedanism, and takes a long step beyond them both.
Sec. 7. The Fulness of Christianity is derived from the Life of Jesus.
Christianity has thus shown itself to be a universal solvent, capable of
receiving into itself the existing truths of the ethnic religions, and
fulfilling them with something higher. Whenever it has come in contact
with natural religion, it has assimilated it and elevated it. This is one
evidence that it is intended to become the universal religion of mankind.
This pleroma, or fulness, integrity, all-sidedness, or by whatever name we
call it, is something deeper than thought. A system of thought might be
devised large enough to include all the truths in all the religions of the
world, putting each in its own place in relation to the rest. Such a
system might show how they all are related to each other, and all are in
harmony. But this would be a philosophy, not a religion. No such
philosophy appears in the original records of Christianity. The New
Testament does not present Jesus as a philosopher, nor Paul as a
metaphysician. There is no systematic teaching in the Gospels, nor in the
Epistles. Yet we find there, in incidental utterances, the elements of
this many-sided truth, in regard to God, man, duty, and immortality. But
we find it as life, not as thought. It is a fulness of life in the soul of
Jesus, passing into the souls of his disciples and apostles, and from them
in a continuous stream of Christian experience, down to the present time.
The word pleroma ([Greek: plaeroma]), in the New Testament, means that
which fills up; fulness, fulfilling, filling full. The verb "to fulfil"
([Greek: plaerhoo]) carries the same significance. To "fulfil that which
was spoken by the prophets," means to fill it full of meaning and truth.
Jesus came, not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it; that is, to carry
it out further. He fulfilled Moses and the prophets, not by doing exactly
what they foretold, in their sense, but by doing it in a higher, deeper,
and larger sense. He fulfilled their thought as the flower fulfils the
bud, and as the fruit fulfils the flower. The sense of the fulness of life
in Jesus and in the Gospel seems to have struck the minds of the early
disciples, and powerfully impressed them. Hence the frequency with which
they use this verb and noun, signifying fulness. Jesus fulfilled the law,
the prophets, all righteousness, the Scriptures. He came in the fulness of
time. His joy was fulfilled. Paul prays that the disciples may be filled
full of joy, peace, and hope, with the fruits of righteousness, with all
knowledge, with the spirit of God, and with all the fulness of God. He
teaches that love fulfils the law, that the Church is the fulness of
Christ, that Christ fills all things full of himself, and that in him
dwells all the fulness of the godhead bodily.
One great distinction between Christianity and all other religions is in
this pleroma, or fulness of life which it possesses, and which, to all
appearance, came from the life of Jesus. Christianity is often said to be
differenced from ethnic religions in other ways. They are natural
religions: it is revealed. They are natural: it is supernatural. They are
human: it is divine. But _all_ truth is revealed truth; it all comes from
God, and, therefore, so far as ethnic religions contain truth, they also
are revelations. Moreover, the supernatural element is to be found in all
religions; for inspiration, in some form, is universal. All great births
of time are supernatural, making no part of the nexus of cause and effect.
How can you explain the work of Confucius, of Zoroaster, of the Buddha, of
Mohammed, out of the existing state of society, and the educational
influences of their time? All such great souls are much more the makers of
their age than its result; they are imponderable elements in civilization,
not to be accounted for by anything outside of themselves. Nor can we urge
the distinction of human and divine; for there is a divine element in all
ethnic religions, and a broadly human element in Christianity. Jesus is
as much the representative of human nature as he is the manifestation of
God. He is the Son of man, no less than the Son of God.
One great fact which makes a broad distinction between other religions and
Christianity is that _they_ are ethnic and _it_ is catholic. They are the
religions of races and nations, limited by these lines of demarcation, by
the bounds which God has beforehand appointed. Christianity is a catholic
religion: it is the religion of the human race. It overflows all
boundaries, recognizes no limits, belongs to man as man. And this it does,
because of the fulness of its life, which it derives from its head and
fountain, Jesus Christ, in whom dwells the fulness both of godhead and of
manhood.
It is true that the great missionary work of Christianity has long been
checked. It does not now convert whole nations. Heathenism, Mohammedanism,
Judaism, Brahmanism, Buddhism, stand beside it unmoved. What is the cause
of this check?
The catholicity of the Gospel was born out of its fluent and full life. It
was able to convert the Greeks and Romans, and afterward Goths, Vandals,
Lombards, Franks, Scandinavians, because it came to them, not as a creed,
but as a life. But neither Roman Catholics nor Protestants have had these
large successes since the Middle Ages. Instead of a life, Christianity
became a church and a creed. When this took place, it gradually lost its
grand missionary power. It no longer preached truth, but doctrine; no
longer communicated life, but organized a body of proselytes into a rigid
church. Party spirit took the place of the original missionary spirit.
Even the majority of the German tribes was converted by Arian
missionaries, and orthodoxy has not the credit of that last grand success
of Christianity. The conversion of seventy millions of Chinese in our own
day to the religion of the Bible was not the work of Catholic or
Protestant missionaries, but of the New Testament. The Church and the
creed are probably the cause of this failure. Christianity has been
partially arrested in its natural development, first by the Papal Church,
and secondly by the too rigid creeds of orthodoxy.
If the swarming myriads of India and Mongolia are to be converted to
Christianity, it must be done by returning to the original methods. We
must begin by recognizing and accepting the truth they already possess. We
must be willing to learn of them, in order to teach them. Comparative
Theology will become the science of missions if it help to show to
Christians the truth and good in the creeds outside of Christendom. For to
the Church and to its sects, quite as much as to the world, applies the
saying, "He that exalteth himself shall be abased, but he that humbleth
himself shall be exalted."
Sec. 8. Christianity as a Religion of Progress and of Universal Unity.
As long as a tree or an animal lives it continues to grow. An arrest of
growth is the first symptom of the decline of life. Fulness of life,
therefore, as the essential character of Christianity, should produce a
constant development and progress; and this we find to be the case. Other
religions have their rise, progress, decline, and fall, or else are
arrested and become stationary. The religions of Persia, Egypt, Greece,
Rome, Scandinavia, have come to an end. As ethnic religions, they shared
the fortunes of the race or nation with which they were associated. The
systems of Confucius, of the Buddha, of Brahmanism, of Judaea, of
Mohammed, are arrested. They remain stationary. But, thus far,
Christianity and Christendom advance together. Christianity has developed;
out of its primitive faith, several great theologies, the mediaeval
Papacy, Protestantism, and is now evidently advancing into new and larger
forms of religious, moral, and social activity.
The fact of a fulness of divine and human life in Jesus took form in the
doctrines of the incarnation and the Trinity. The fact of the reconciling
and uniting power of this life took form in the doctrine of the atonement.
Both of these doctrines are illogical and false, in their form, as church
doctrines. But both of them represent most essential facts. We have seen
the truths in the doctrines of incarnation and the Trinity. The truth in
the atonement is, as the word itself signifies, the at-one-making power of
the Gospel. The reconciliation of antagonist truths and opposing
tendencies, which philosophy has always unsuccessfully endeavored to state
in theory, Christianity accomplishes in practice. Christianity continually
reproduces from its depths of life a practical faith in God, both as law
and as love, in man, both as a free and yet as a providentially guided
being. It gives us God as unity and as variety, as the substance and as
the form of the world. It states the reality of evil as forcibly as any
system of dualism, and yet produces a practical faith in good as being
stronger than evil and sure to conquer it. In social life it reconciles
the authority of human law with the freedom of individual thought and
action. In the best Christian governments, we find all the order which a
despotism can guarantee, with all the freedom to which a democracy can
aspire. No such social organization is to be found outside of Christendom.
How can this be, unless it is somehow connected with Christianity?
The civilization of Christendom consists in a practical reconciliation of
antagonist tendencies. It is a "pleroma" in social life, a fulness of
concord, a harmony of many parts. The harmony is indeed by no means
complete, for the millennium has not arrived. As yet the striking feature
of Christendom is quantity, power, variety, fulness; not as yet
co-operation, harmony, peace, union. Powers are first developed, which are
afterward to be harmonized. The sword is not yet beaten into a
ploughshare, nor has universal peace arrived. Yet such is the inevitable
tendency of things. As knowledge spreads, as wealth increases, as the
moral force of the world is enlarged, law, more and more, takes the place
of force. Men no longer wear swords by their sides to defend themselves
from attack. If attacked, they call the policeman. Towns are no longer
fortified with walls, nor are the residences of noblemen kept in a state
of defence. They are all folded in the peaceful arms of national law. So
far the atonement has prevailed. Only nations still continue to fight; but
the time is at hand when international law, the parliament of the world,
the confederation of man, shall take the place of standing armies and
iron-clad navies.
So, in society, internal warfare must, sooner or later, come to an end.
Pauperism and crime must be treated according to Christian methods.
Criminals must be reformed, and punishment must be administered in
reference to that end. Co-operation in labor and trade must take the place
of competition. The principles by means of which these vast results will
be brought about are already known; the remaining difficulties are in
their application. Since slavery fell in the United States, one great
obstacle to the progress of man is removed. The next social evils in order
will be next assailed, and, one by one, will be destroyed. Christianity is
becoming more and more practical, and its application to life is
constantly growing more vigorous and wise.
The law of human life is, that the development of differences must precede
their reconciliation. Variety must precede harmony, analysis must prepare
the way for synthesis, opposition must go before union. Christianity, as a
powerful stimulus applied to the human mind, first develops all the
tendencies of the soul; and afterward, by its atoning influence on the
heart, reconciles them. Christ is the Prince of Peace. He came to make
peace between man and God, between man and man, between law and love,
reason and faith, freedom and order, progress and conservatism. But he
first sends the sword, afterward the olive-branch. Nevertheless, universal
unity is the object and end of Christianity.
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